314 Unexplored Spain 
for a snow-scramble, following the dwindling Monachil to its 
source, where the nascent river trickles in triple streamlets down 
black rock-walls mantled by impending snow-fields. Here snow 
lay in scattered patches dotted with the resurgent unkillable 
“pincushion” gorse (Buphaurwm spinosum) and a spiny broom 
that later develops a purple blossom, and separated by intervals 
where the melting mantle had left Mother Earth viscous and in- 
choate, heart-broken at the indignity of eight months in the arctic. 
Higher up the snow became continuous, but seamed by innumer- 
able rills, each laughing and dancing as in delight at a new-found 
existence, or converging to joi streams in buoyant exuberance. 
Some leapt forward through 
fringing margins of emerald 
moss; others ploughed sullen 
ways beneath an overhung 
snow-brae. But no chirp or 
sound of bird-life broke the 
silence, the only living creatures 
were ants and a bronze-green 
beetle! (Pterostichus rutilans, 
De}.)—not a sign of those alpine 
forms we had specially come to 
seek. 
From 8500 feet the snow 
stretched upwards unbroken (save where some sheer escarpment 
protruded), covering in purest white the vast shoulder of the 
Veleta. The Picécho itself was to-day hidden amidst swirling 
clouds, and only once did we enjoy a momentary glimpse of 
its great scarped outline. Yet in three short weeks, say by May 
20, all these leagues of solid snow will have vanished. 
Facing this gorge of the Monachil, the opposite slope is 
crowned by the conspicuous turreted crags known as the Pefiones 
de San Francisco, 8460 feet. To these L. had climbed, and 
though we both failed in finding the chief of our special objects 
(the snow-finch) yet L. had enjoyed a glimpse of another alpine 
species, new to us, and we decided to revisit the spot on the 
morrow. 
That morning again broke fine, the precursor of a glorious 
day. Hardly had we left our quarters than a lammergeyer 
soared overhead, then, gently closing his giant wings, plunged 
